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Disaster Aid After the 1783 Laki Eruption

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Disaster Aid After the 1783 Laki Eruption Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 25 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0070.v2 Haze, Hunger, Hesitation: Disaster aid after the 1783 Laki eruption Claudia E. Wieners ∗ aInstitute of Economics, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy bCentre for Complex Systems Studies, Utrecht University, Netherlands Abstract The 1783-1784 Laki eruption was one of the most severe natural catastrophes to occur in Iceland in historical times (since 1140 years). Vegetation damage by sulphate aerosol and fluorine poisoning caused a massive decimation of live- stock. The impact of fluorine poisoning and sulphate aerosol on human mortal- ity is uncertain, but the loss of animals caused a famine which took many lives. The vulnerability of the Icelandic society to famine is discussed. 18th Century Iceland was a Danish dependency and, despite the abundance of fish in the surrounding waters, a subsistence farming community and thus highly depen- dent on livestock. On the other hand, the farming community possessed coping strategies which mitigated the impact of livestock loss. During the famine, the Danish government was in principle willing to provide relief. However, local authorities in Iceland were slow to ask for help, and did not dare to exploit the means at their disposal (e.g. the right to ban the export of Icelandic foodstuff) without consent from Copenhagen. The Danish officials in turn were unwill- ing to act decisively upon incomplete information. These two factors prevented timely measures. While 4:4 × 105kg of grain were provided for famine relief in summer 1784, the merchants exported 1:2 × 106kg of fish, which greatly aggra- vated the hunger in the second winter. The effects of this ‘natural’ catastrophe could therefore have been significantly reduced by efficient government. ∗Corresponding author Email address: [email protected] (Claudia E. Wieners ) © 2020 by the author(s). Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY license. Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 25 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0070.v2 Keywords: Laki, Iceland, volcanic haze, fluorine poisoning, famine, disaster relief 1. Introduction The 1783 Laki eruption was, in terms of lava output, the second largest eruption in Iceland since the country was inhabited around AD870. Lasting from June 8th, 1783 to February 7th 1784, it produced about 15km3 of lava, 2 5 covering an area of around 600km , spread fine poisonous ash over most of the island, and produced a persistent sulphurous haze which was observed over large parts of the Northern hemisphere (Thordarson & Self, 1993, 2003). The so-called Haze Hardships (Móðuharðindin) caused by the eruption were prob- ably the worst natural catastrophe which befell Iceland, and killed about 1/6 10 of the human population. However, few, if any, of the deaths were caused di- rectly by the eruption, i.e. by lava streams or tephra fall. Written accounts (e.g. Steingrímsson (1788/1998); Finnsson (1796)) agree that the main causes were famine - brought about by a massive loss of livestock - and non-specified contagious diseases (Hálfdanarson, 1984). More recently, fluorine poisoning and 15 inhalation of volcanic haze have been suggested as additional contributors to human mortality (Grattan et al., 2003; D’Alessandro, 2006; Balkanski et al., 2018). Perhaps remarkably for those times, the government of Denmark - of which Iceland was a dependency - was in principle willing to provide significant famine relief, but on the whole the operation was not successful. 20 In the English literature, this attempted disaster relief, as well as the influ- ence of the socio-economic background state of Iceland, has received relatively little attention. A milestone contribution on the history of the Laki eruption is the Icelandic volume ‘Skaftáreldar 1783-1784’ (The Skaftá Fires/Laki eruption 1783-1784), which contains research articles and a compilation of historical let- 25 ters, mostly reports by Icelandic officials to the Danish authorities (Gunnlaugs- son & Rafnsson, 1984). However, since its publication in 1984, much research has been done on the geophysical and climatological aspects of the eruption 2 Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 25 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0070.v2 (important publications include Thordarson et al. (2003); Thordarson & Self (2003); Zambri et al. (2019a,b)), its impacts on human health Grattan et al. 30 (2003); Schmidt et al. (2010), but also on the socio-economic situation in Ice- land (Gunnarsson, 1983; Eggertsson, 1998; Vasey, 2009). Combining these strands of literature, the current review article discusses how natural and human factors contributed to the high mortality during the Haze Hardships. The following section (exposure) discusses the volcanic haz- 35 ards and their direct and indirect effects on human health and mortality, es- pecially the contribution by air pollution and fluorine poisoning. Section 3 (vulnerability) outlines the socio-economic situation in Iceland and investigates vulnerability to famine, and section 4 (capability) describes how Icelandic and Danish authorities tried to cope with the disaster. Section 5 summarises possi- 40 ble long-term effects of the eruption, while section 6 discusses in more general terms the reasons for the meagre effects of relief actions. Although the article is first and foremost a review on scientific literature, historical sources are used to add some details. Original contributions in this study are the quantification of aid measures in terms of calorie intakes, an esti- 45 mate of human fluorine intake, and the attempt in the final section to interpret the disaster aid from a risk reduction perspective. The most important original sources used are: the collection of reports in Gunnlaugsson & Rafnsson (1984), a collection of laws and regulations for Iceland (Stephensen & Sigurðsson, 1854), and accounts by the Icelandic parson Jón 50 Steingrímsson (Steingrímsson, 1788/1998, 1791/2002) and the student Magnús Stephensen (Stephensen, 1785). The reports in (Gunnlaugsson & Rafnsson, 1984, p. 299-417) are letters by Icelandic officials to the Danish authorities, and statements by local farmers (þingvitni), sent in 1784. They will henceforth be referred to as [Rep1784]. For a summary of these reports, sorted by topic, see 55 the Supplementary Material (henceforth referred to as SMx, where x is a section number). 3 Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 25 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0070.v2 2. Hazard exposure: Fire, Fog and Frost There already exists an extensive literature on physical aspects of the erup- tion, including geological, environmental and climatological aspects. These as- 60 pects will only be briefly summarised, followed by a discussion of the conse- quences on the human population, in particular various factors contributing to the high mortality rates, in the light of contemporary records. 2.1. Environmental impact 2.1.1. Local effects: Lava and tephra fall 65 The eruption took place along a linear vent system of about 27km length which is known as Lakagígar (cones of Laki) and is part of the Grímsvötn vol- canic system (Thordarson & Self, 1993). The flood lava eruption started on June 8th, 1783, and consisted of 10 episodes beginning with explosive activity (due to lava degassing) followed by lava flow. The total lava output was estimated to be 3 2 70 15km , covering an area of ca. 600km (see fig. 1). Although the vent system itself is situated in the uninhabited highlands, lava followed two river gorges into inhabited areas (Steingrímsson, 1788/1998; Thordarson et al., 2003). The first episodes, until about July 20th, occurred on the western part of the vent system and their lava entered the Skaftá river gorge near Hnúta and near Leiðólfsfell 75 (Thordarson & Self, 1993). The river dried up for 3 months (Thordarson et al., 2003), probably due to evaporation, blocking of the river course, or percolation of water through lava, or a combination of those. The lava followed the river bed to the lowlands, where it spread over the pastures and destroyed several farms. Other farmsteads were destroyed by inundation (after tributaries of the 80 Skaftá became blocked by lava), by tephra fall and by sand storms (partly sand from the exposed beds of the dried-up Skaftá river). From August onward, the eruption shifted to the eastern half of the vent system, and the lava followed the Hverfisfljót river, again destroying several farms. The eruption ceased on February 7th, 1784. 85 In total, 42 farmsteads and cottages (≈ 0:8% of all Icelandic farms) were given up either temporally or permanently directly because of lava flows (19), 4 Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 25 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0070.v2 Laki eruption: Lava flows and abandoned farms K = Kirkjubæjarklaustur Lava stream Lf=Leiðólfsfell glacier river coast line Hn = Hnúta Farm, aband- Skaftá Lakagígar oned due to tephra fall sand drift lava stream flooding other not aband. Hverfisfljót Lakagígar height 100m height 300m height 500m Hn river gorge Skaf†á Lf river gorge K Skaftá Figure 1: Map of the surroundings of the Lakagígar (based on (Thordarson & Self, 1993, fig. 7) and (Guðbergsson & Theodórsson, 1984, chap. 6.3)). 5 Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 25 June 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202001.0070.v2 inundation (5), tephra fall (7) and sand storms (11); another 19 were abandoned for other reasons including loss of animals (Guðbergsson & Theodórsson, 1984). No human lives were taken by the eruption itself, but several hundred persons 90 had to leave their homes. Some of them stayed in the neighbourhood, e.g. on farms given up by their neighbours, while about 500 out of 1964 inhabitants of Vestur-Skaftafellsýsla left the district, mostly moving west, either to other farms or to the fishing districts, e.g. Vestmannaeyjar, Gullbringusýsla (Gunnlaugsson, 1984a). In the two communes closest to the volcano, Leiðvallarhreppur and 95 Kleifahreppur, the number of inhabitants fell from about 1300 in 1783 to 525 in 1784 (Guðbergsson & Theodórsson, 1984), partly due to migration, partly due to death.
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